A Brexit deal with Labour to enter a customs union could cost the Conservatives the support of as many of their own MPs as they would gain from Labour, Jeremy Hunt has said as pressure mounts on Theresa May’s leadership over the cross-party talks.
Conservative association chairs have forced an emergency summit on the prime minister’s future, with 800 constituency chairs expected to hold a vote on whether she should resign.
The organiser of the summit said grassroots anger had been prompted by both the talks with Jeremy Corbyn and the UK’s participation in the European parliamentary elections.
Cross-party talks with senior shadow ministers and officials are likely to continue this week after participants on Monday emerged optimistic about a change in tone and a feeling there were grounds to continue discussions, including on the issues of a customs union and single market alignment.
Speaking on a tour of five African countries, Hunt said there was a “great sense of urgency” to get a deal passed, but that he “very much hoped” the talks would not end in a deal proposing a customs union.
“I think there is a risk you would lose more Conservatives than you gain Labour MPs,” the foreign secretary said. “If it was something different then the result could be different as well.”
An extraordinary general meeting to discuss May’s future was triggered after more than 10% of chairs signed a petition calling for the summit, which is to be held in June.
The vote on her leadership would not be binding, but organisers have said they believe it would put significant pressure on May to resign and on cabinet ministers and MPs to act.
The Tory deputy chair, Andrew Sharpe, who chairs the National Conservative Convention which organises grassroots members, has told May the meeting will be held, according to the Sun.
The petition was organised by the chair of the Bethnal Green and Bow Conservatives, Dinah Glover, who said she believed it was time for May to resign or for the cabint to act to oust her.
MPs cannot hold a vote of no confidence in the prime minister until December, after May won a year’s grace when she defeated a no-confidence challenge before Christmas last year. She has pledged to step down when the first phase of Brexit is delivered.
The motion drafted by Glover says the party “no longer feel that Mrs May is the right person to continue as prime minister to lead us forward in the negotiations”.
It adds: “We therefore with great reluctance ask that she considers her position and resigns, to allow the Conservative party to choose another leader, and the country to move forward and negotiate our exit from the EU.”
When the petition was launched, Glover said the triggers for most constituency chairs to sign the petition had been the “humiliation” of holding European elections and May’s decision to enter talks with the Labour leader to find a Brexit compromise.
Hunt said he did not believe changing the leadership would solve the crisis. “The difficulty that Theresa May has is far more a function of the fact that it is a hung parliament than decisions she has made,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“And therefore just changing the fact that she is the leader doesn’t actually change the parliamentary arithmetic. What it would do is create delay in the process and another period of time where we have Brexit paralysis.”
May is likely to face significant pressure if the Tories take a drubbing at the local elections on Thursday.
In his latest projection for Thursday’s polls, in which more than 8,000 council seats in England are being contested, the Tory peer Robert Hayward suggested his party could lose about 500 seats to the Liberal Democrats, and 300 to Labour.